BAMANA ANIMAL PUPPET 67, Mali

Note the crack, now stable, and some wood loss at the base. There is a small strip of leather on the head.

Sogo bo, the puppet masquerade drama of the Bamana, is an exploration
of the moral universe. The largest group of masquerade characters and the
oldest performed in the theater are bush animals. In Bamana communities,
the bush is defined as the domain of men and the interpretation of the theater's
bush animal characters are informed by beliefs and values associated with
hunting and with hunters as men of action and society's heros. Over the
last decades, at the same time that the actual area of uncultivated land
has constricted and the number of hunters have diminished, the definition
of the bush and the nature of the hunter/hero have been extended to other
arenas of endeavor. In the Sogo bo theater, bush animal masquerades
remain important precisely because they are richly drawn and complex metaphors
through which to explore the nature of knowledge and power [and] the relationship
of the individual to the group.

from The Sogow by Mary Jo Arnoldi in Bamana: The Art of Existence
in Mali. New York: Museum of African Art.